Iji: The Aftermath
by Kaos Forte
Summary: Iji: The Aftermath is the first installment of the events that take place after General Tor's defeat. In the now post-apocalyptic earth, old grudges are going to have to be set aside in order for everyone to survive as the journey to finding a way to rebuild Earth begins, as well as searching for any other human survivors that may have managed to survive that Tasen's Alpha Strike.


As his weaponized carrier of destruction self destructs from having taken too much damage, the Komato General and the "Human Anomaly" are blasted twenty or more feet into the air before falling and landing onto the floor of a room on the level below the roof, the blast point where the Komato General's armored carrier had exploded having also destroyed a significant portion of the roof. The only reason why he and his human opponent had survived was because they each had a nano-field protecting them from the brunt of the blast. As it is, the Komato General was looking rather worse for wear given that he had just lost a battle in which he had thought victory was all but assured. That is, until he was made to realize just how fatal an error he had made in judging the situation he was in. Until he realized that she had THAT weapon. Even at Maximum Charge, there was little that he was able to do against a weapon of such power.

"Ghkk! That weapon..._h-how_? No one outside of Imperial research should even be aware of it! M-mercy, please!"

Iji, who had been called the "Human Anomaly" by the Tasen and the Komato alike, looked down upon the leader of the would be conquerers of her world; the leader of the ones who were determined to Alpha Strike Earth to the point of complete annihilation. Breathing heavily from the exertion of her battle against the Komato General named Tor, Iji simply looks down upon him with barely restrained anger. He was the third one to have tried to kill her when all she wanted was for her and whatever else was left of the human race to be left alone; to be allowed to _survive_,even if there didn't seem to be much of a chance for a future after what the Tasen had done under the direction of Elite Krotera. "Mercy? You surrender, then?"

Tor's face, or what little of it can be seen under that strange helmet of his, seems to contort a bit and become slightly withdrawn. "I will not die by Human hands." Even having been destroyed in battle, it seemed as though Tor still refused to let go of his pride; the one thing out of everything else that he still had to hang on to. Iji's face contorted as well, her anger now clearly showing on the surface once more. "You should have thought of that _before_ you tried to fight me! I'm not some weakling just because I'm human! Now...will you _listen_ to me?"

The conversation that followed seemed almost ordinary compared to the events that had led up to it. Iji, despite the fate that may well have awaited her and her entire race by virtue of the fact that her world was now an Alpha Struck world, insisted on the Komato leaving. There was already far too much death, given the fighting that had been going on between the Tasen and the Komato, not to mention the innumerable number of human lives that had been lost as a result of the Tasen's Alpha Strike, invasion, and militaristic campaign to establish Earth as their last outpost in the hopes of escaping the Komato and surviving. Now, only a handful managed to survive, buried somewhere in Deep Sector, in the farthest reaches where they at least had a chance of avoiding being noticed, not to mention avoiding the stench of human blood.

After several tense minutes of conversation, the inevitable conclusion was reached, and General Tor had decided to send the fleet away, effectively cancelling the Alpha Strike and ensuring that the mission to wipe out the last of Tasenkind in existence would be declared a success. Though he allowed for the survival of humanity, General Tor believed that the future that humanity had left was a bleak one, and one doomed to failure. Iji had no home to return to, and now Tor, unable to face his own conscience now that he had been forced to confront it, made the decision to forgo returning to his home in exchange for the ultimate sacrifice, as well as the ultimate selfishness. However, just before he could hit the switch that would fry him along with his armor, thereby ending his life, a hand closed over his wrist, holding it firmly in place as General Tor's eyes widened in shock and surprise.

"Ansaksie? What are you doing here? I thought that you had returned to lower orbit along with the rest of the fleet!" Ansaksie, The Komato Assassin who had turned traitor for the sake of helping Iji to defeat Iosa, simply gave General Tor a stern look as he stood over him, keeping his hand out of reach of the suicide circuits. "I came here to pick up your logs...as well as to offer you a chance."

Knowing exactly what Ansaksie meant, General Tor merely scoffed, once more attempting to reach for the suicide circuits now that he was beginning to get over his initial surprise, resulting in a shortlived struggle against the hand that was closed around his wrist, which was swiftly ended by Ansaksie hacking General Tor's Nano-Armor and disabling its motor functions. General Tor, astonished that Ansaksie would go to such lengths, glares at him as best as he is able to given that he is incapable of doing more than lying there and voicing his displeasure at the situation. Before he can start though, Ansaksie lets go of him, no longer needing to keep him from commiting suicide now that the motor functions of his armor have been disabled, and turns to face Iji, walking a few steps towards her as he does so.

"So...I see you managed to survive the fight against a general. You should feel proud. None before you have ever faced a general and been victorious in the endeavor, much less lived to tell the tale." Iji says nothing in response, averting her gaze and taking an awkward step back. She never has, nor probably ever will be able to stomach fighting and killing. Ansaksie sees this, the same thing that he had seen both during and after the fight with Iosa the Invincible, and simply opts for changing the topic of conversation to another matter. "I spoke with your brother before coming here. Don't worry, he is unharmed, or at least has managed to avoid being harmed anymore than he already has been by Komato forces. He's hiding in Deep Sector with the others, although I expect that they will be coming out soon, now that the Komato are finally leaving."

Iji, whose features had taken on a defensive and worried look as she gripped her weapon more tightly when Dan was mentioned, calmed down a bit upon hearing that her brother was still all right. She then walked over to General Tor and stopped not far from him, the scowl on General Tor's face now very easy to see as his gaze fell once again upon Ansaksie. "You can't do this to me! You have no right!"

Ansaksie opens his mouth to respond, but he is cut off by Iji before he can begin formulating a response. "You have no right to talk to us about our own rights and what we can and cannot do after all of the things that you and those under your command have done to my world, _especially_ when you tried to kill yourself rather than take responsibility for your actions!"

As iji half yelled at General Tor for his blatant cowardice, first at refusing to allow a human to kill him, and then at being denied the opportunity to end his life on his own terms, his face once again contorted, except this time it was oddly contrasted by a look in his eyes that seemed to hint at a part of him dying at Iji's words. After several long seconds of tense silence between them, Iji stepped closer to General Tor until she was right next to him, continuing on in a calmer tone of voice. "If you really want to end your own life, then you go on ahead and do that, I no longer care, but you are going to take responsibility for what you have done, dammit. You came here with your ships, and your troops, and your weapons of destruction. Now, having chosen to remain rather than to leave with your fleet, you will help me to restore my world. Do that, and maybe, just maybe your life will have a little more meaning than the number of lives you can kill with the pull of a trigger, and maybe then you'll be able to redeem yourself, and make it so that the countless number of civilizations that you have already slaughtered just to get at the Tasen will not have been destroyed for nothing. Once you have helped to save my world, then, and only then, will I allow you to end your life on your own terms. No sooner."

Ansaksie watched Iji lecture Tor, once again in awe of of her. Though she had refused to kill a single Komato, she stood there and spoke with conviction, as well as an unquestionable fortitude that was clearly the source of her strength; that same strength that had allowed her to survive through all of the fighting that she had to go through to get here, and even allow her to defeat a Komato general. General Tor simply continued to lie there, not that he could do much else, and averted his gaze, his eyes having dimmed just a bit more as another piece of him died. However, within those eyes now lay an understanding of his fate, and an acknowledgement that he had never wished to face. Iji was right, of course. After having destroyed countless civilizations in the pursuit of the Tasen's extinction, he had to take responsibility, and he now had no choice but to face that fact, and to bear the weight of his conscience until his dying day. Eventually, he returned his Gaze to Iji and nodded once, or at least he would have if the motor functions of is nano-armor had not been completely disabled. Unable to manage that single nod, he instead said that he understood. There was nothing more to say on the matter. He had lost. He was the vanquished, and now had no choice but to adhere to the wishes of the victor.

* * *

Far below, in the deepest depths of Deep Sector, power had finally been restored, and the human dead in that area were being gathered up under Dan's direction to be given a proper burial. As the Tasen busily worked to carry out their assigned task, happy to at least have something to do other than sit around and wait to be found and killed, Vateilika walks up to Dan as he watches the camera feed displaying the skies above the D.C.M.F.P.R. Multi-building Complex. As he sees the Alpha Strike Cancelled and the Komato ships leaving the Earth, he can't help but feel a sense of elation mixed with a strange emptiness, a feeling shared by Vateilika, although for her it's more elation mixed with profound relief in addition to an empty feeling. The Earth had been saved, or at least it had been insofar as an Alpha Struck world could be, and now they had a chance at a future, if nothing else.

The other Tasen were too far from the screens and too absorbed in their task and their own thoughts to notice what was going on, and would have found out anyway if not for Dan turning to Vateilika ad making a shushing gesture before she could begin shouting the good news. "Let's not tell anyone just yet, huh? We don't want to risk drawing attention to ourselves, and there's no telling just how far away from our planet the Komato have to be in order to be out of scanning range. For all we know they could be monitoring any audio feeds we have until they are outside of our system."

Vateilika saw the wisdom in what Dan said and brought herself back under control, even though the emotions were still close to bursting through the surface of calmness that she had forced over herself and her features. "So...what do you want to do now?"

Dan has to think about that for a while before finally shaking his head and replying. "I don't know... The Komato General Tor and the Komato Asassin Ansaksie are still here, and while they seem to be decent enough for Komato, we still don't know if they can be trusted, and if so, just how far _we_ can afford to trust _them_. Besides, Iji is going to want to weigh in on any decision that we make. For now there probably isn't much that we can do other than attempt to disarm them and leave them locked up somewhere, at least until we have more concrete decisions to go on."

Vateilika nods, although she has some personal reservations about Dan's proposed course of action. Admittedly she has a very strong bias given that the Komato have been hunting down the Tasen ever since they seceded from the Komato empire in protest to the direction they had chosen to go in, and she had no allusions that she would likely have trouble agreeing to anything short of shooting both Komato in the head and leaving them to rot in an abandoned wasteland somewhere. To her mind it was no less than those damned Komato deserved, and she had no reservations about pulling the trigger herself if it came right down to it. She doesn't let any of this show in her expression or body language though, and instead returns to helping the others finish the preparations for burying their dead, Human as well as Tasen. Tomrrow she would have some hard decisions to make. Tommorow they would have to decide what to do with the two Komato remaining on Earth. Tomorrow there would be Tasen crying for Komato blood. Tomorrow the long road of rebuilding on a planetary scale would begin. But that's tomorrow. Give her today and she will be happy.

* * *

Author's Note: Well, here it is, my first attempt at writing fan fiction. I did my best to make sure that there were no typos, although I have a feeling that I am going to have to go through this again just to find and take care of the ones that got away from me. =w= This first chapter is the Prologue in what I am hoping will be a great story, and I'll be sure to update this as often as I can. Later on I may well decide to do character profiles for each of the major characters. If so, you will find them between the author's notes and any reviews that I reply to.


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